Monday 23 January 2012

Who wants to be a city?

A question that Franchise customers should be pondering - because you can bet Winkelman is - is what sort of a city has a football club named after an entirely different town? Milton Keynes will have, if it is successful in its bid for city status as part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations this year. You know, the Queen who officially opened the stadium that Franchise play at.

With the pressure building from the Wimbledon area for Franchise to drop the Dons and with MK becoming increasingly desperate to achieve city status - and not forgetting Winkelman's close ties with MK council who submit the city status bid - the head of steam building for the name change is growing. Seriously, what sort of city has its main sporting team having a nickname in it that enrages many of the residents of another town? That's about as un-city-like behaviour as you can think of - and that will matter to both MK council and Winkelman, even if it doesn't to Franchise customers. There are plenty of candidates for city status and MK doesn't need any negative publicity holding it back from being granted it.

So, the small number of Franchise internet warriors loudly proclaiming they'll never let it happen or that they'll quit Franchise in protest, need to be aware that they are utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Protest all they like (and we are literally talking about less than 50 people here and there are tens of thousands more in MK who either don't care or would prefer the club renamed), it won't make the smallest bit of difference in the end. As I've pointed out before, their only choice is whether they want to be a part of creating a better future for all concerned by mounting their own campaign or whether they want to cling on to the past and another town's football club's nickname.

Winkelman is the only one who can change the name, but who's he going to listen to - a few dozen moaning Franchise customers or the council he still has huge amounts of business dealings with? We all know the answer to that one. It's probably time Milton Keynes' growth was recognised by officially becoming a city, so it can stop pretending it is one, and it's certainly time that Franchise grew up and stopped pretending it has anything to do with Wimbledon. The Franchise customers will continue to splutter their protests, but they know we're right and they know they have no way to stop Winkelman either. Tear up as many season tickets as you like, there are far more potential customers out there who will come to watch 'MK City' than will ever come to watch Franchise FC - and that bottom line is all that counts to those with the power to change things.

1 comment:

  1. Keep fighting the good fight - and thanks for your comment on my little piece about QPR's recent trip up to the no-soul bowl in the Milton Keynes Asda car park. I'll be linking to your blog from my 'likes' page and will also write a short post bigging you up. If you feel your readers might enjoy my piece do please feel free to link to it from your blog somehow:

    http://thisismyengland.blogspot.com/2012/01/ends-of-some-eras.html

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